Startups Growth Lead
Our mission is to automate coding. The first step in our journey is to build the best tool for professional programmers, using a combination of inventive research, design, and engineering. Our organization is very flat, and our team is small and talent dense. We particularly like people who are truth-seeking, passionate, and creative. We enjoy spirited debate, crazy ideas, and shipping code.
About the role
We’re hiring a Startups Growth Lead to own how Cursor wins the startup ecosystem.
You’ll focus on the highest-leverage distribution motions: top accelerators, founder communities, and the networks that shape developer tool adoption. This is not traditional growth. You’re building the distribution engine from zero: driving adoption across founders, startups, and VCs, and turning that into compounding usage and retention.
This is a high-agency operator role. You’ll set strategy, build the motion, and ship and iterate relentlessly, making Cursor the default for founders and startup engineering teams. You’ll work cross-functionally across Growth, Product Marketing, Brand, Community, DevRel, and Product, with full ownership and a bias toward speed, leverage, and measurable impact.
What you’ll do
Own Cursor’s startup distribution motion: define who we are prioritizing, why, how we win, and then translate that into a focused roadmap.
Build and evolve the startup program strategy: launch and iterate programs and motions that drive adoption, retention, and advocacy in the ecosystem.
Develop strategic partnerships: build and manage relationships with accelerators, funds, communities, and platforms that compound Cursor’s distribution and credibility.
Drive community-led and social growth: create repeatable loops that turn ecosystem presence into sustained awareness and product pull.
Find unconventional, high-leverage channels: identify and test new distribution wedges that help Cursor become the default in the ecosystem.
Measure impact and prove incrementality: define success metrics, set up tracking, and evaluate what worked, why it worked, and what to do next.
Operate with strong prioritization under constraint: stay focused on the highest-leverage work even as inbound requests and partnership opportunities pile up.
Partner cross-functionally to ship: collaborate with Brand, PMM, DevRel, Community, and Growth to execute quickly without creating drag.
What success looks like
Cursor becomes a default choice in key startup communities and cohorts.
We have a clear, compounding ecosystem engine: repeatable programs, scalable partner motions, and durable community loops.
Partnerships translate into measurable product adoption and sustained usage, not just logos or “nice-to-have” relationships.
You may be a fit if
You’re a former technical founder, or have deep experience working directly with technical founders and developer communities.
You have strong ecosystem credibility and a track record of driving growth outcomes, not just maintaining relationships.
You can build from scratch: strategy → roadmap → execution → measurement → iteration.
You have excellent judgment about where to spend time for compounding leverage (and where to say no).
You communicate clearly and can align cross-functional teams through crisp plans, narratives, and results.
You’re energized by high ownership, ambiguity, and moving fast.
Experience that helps
Experience building for developer audiences and understanding of how founders and engineers evaluate and adopt tools.
History of building partner motions or programs that have clear metrics and durable flywheels.
Comfort with measurement and experimentation, including working in imperfect attribution environments.